HP Labs to be set up in India

BANGALORE: Hewlett Packard will be inaugurating a division of HP Labs in

India on Tuesday. The lab, to be headquartered in Bangalore, will be the sixth

such lab outside of company headquarters in Palo Alto. The other five HP Labs

are located in Bristol, UK; Cambridge, Massachusets; Grenoble, France; Haifa,

Israel and Tokyo.

The focus of the India lab will be to introduce technologies and solutions

for emerging economies and will be part of HP’s e-inclusion effort. The lab

will initially employ 40-50 people and will be headed by Dr Srinivasan Ramani.

Dr Ramani is the executive vice president of the International Council of

Computer Communication and also serves on the United Nations High-level Panel of

Advisors in Information and Communication Technologies.

Speaking at a pre-event press conference, HP vice president, Strategy and

Corporate Operations, Debra Dunn said that this effort comes in the global

context of a widening gap between the technology-empowered and the

technology-excluded communities and a growing anti-globalization movement

throughout the world. Dunn said that with this effort HP hopes to "invent,

pilot and evolve useful and significant IT solutions as well as innovative

business models that create value in emerging markets."

HP Labs director of the solutions and technology center, Kristian Halvorsen

said that the work done at the India lab will impact initially in India alone

though eventually, the company hopes to adopt the emerging technologies and

solutions in other emerging economies. "This is a paradigm shift," he

said. "Mostly, we’ve addressed problems of North America and other

advanced countries. For the first time we are addressing local questions. We are

trying to find out how world class technology can be brought to bear in local

conditions."

According to HP Labs India director Dr Ramani, the focus here will be on

things like local language adaptation such as annotation from English language

web sites and low cost access devices. A pilot e-inclusion project has already

begun in Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh that will include among other things a web

site that offers a wide variety of community services, Community Resource Centre

kiosks, Communication Infrastructure and Connectivity to local schools and

colleges.

Debra Dunn said that the effort would include an unprecedented level of

relationships with other organizations like the Government, NGOs and

multilaterals like the World Band and the United Nations. In India, HP Labs has

already has a project lined up with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and

another with IIT Madras.